Enough talk about pink balls

In recent weeks there’s been more talk of balls than you’d get in a schoolyard full of teenage boys.

We’ve heard that pink balls are hard to see, go soft pretty quickly, behave abnormally, are not real swingers and can turn green with wear and tear. Which is definitely not what you want in your balls.

And then there are others who say we should stop obsessing about colour.

To quote Elvis, it’s time for a little less conversation, a little more action.

So, today the balls which have been the talk of the cricketing world will be put to the test. The third Test, actually, between Australia and New Zealand at the Adelaide Oval. And the first day-night cricket Test between anyone.

It’s not the only change under consideration in the gentlemen’s game. There’s talk of moving to a four-day Test format. And dispensing with the coin toss to remove any temptation for the home team to doctor the pitch.

Cutting a day off a Test, that’s no biggie. But getting rid of the coin toss. It’s just not cricket.

And cue one of the oddest Youtube videos I’ve seen in a while. Which is saying something.

Meanwhile, NSW wicket keeper Alyssa Healy was the cause of cricket’s strangest dismissal this week when a shot from Meg Lanning bounced off her forehead and into the lunging hands of Lauren Smith.

We were led to believe it was a ‘small breakdown’. But the head of soccer’s ‘governing’ body, Septic Bladder, now says the stress-related illness that landed him in hospital recently almost killed him.

“I was between the angels who were singing and the devil who was lighting the fire,” he says. “I was close to dying. But it was the angels who sang.”

I’d blame the medication if this was the strangest thing that had ever come out of Septic’s mouth. But it’s not. Not by a long shot. Check out the last 10 seconds of this clip if you don’t believe me.

As for Septic being anywhere near angels, we’ll let Darryl Kerrigan have the last word on that.

Novak Djokovic has just racked up a season to remember, with three Grand Slam tournament wins — the French title still eludes him — and a whopping $21 million in prize money for the year, more than Ivan Lendl, Andy Roddick, Stefan Edberg and Jim Courier earned in their entire careers.

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Discussion about the pink balls has me remembering one of my mates back in highschool when he said, completely seriously, that red cars go faster. Yep. (His explanation being that there are fewer pigments so therefore the paint is lighter). As you can imagine we never let him live that down. Can’t help but feel like we’re going to look at the debaters in hindsight and just go, “you mean like how pink balls don’t bounce right?” or “as hard to see coming as a pink ball!”